Sport-Specific Contexts
A round of golf takes four or more hours. The actual swings — the time the club is in motion — add up to roughly two or three minutes across eighteen holes.
The rest of the time you are walking, waiting, thinking, evaluating, preparing, and managing whatever is happening in your mind between the moments of actual performance. That is the most undercoached dimension of golf and one of the most significant competitive variables the sport produces.
Read this passage slowly.
You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.
Isaiah 26:3 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
Perfect peace for the steadfast mind. The steadfast mind is not empty — it is anchored. It is directed toward something stable rather than bouncing between the last shot and the next hole and the leaderboard and the wind and the gallery and the narrative about what this round means. The anchor is what produces the peace. And the peace is what produces the next swing.
Between shots is where the round is managed. The golfer who uses the walk to rehearse the bad shot they just hit arrives at the next tee already burdened. The one who acknowledges the shot, gathers the information it provides, and redirects attention to something present and grounding — the course, the walk, a conversation with the caddie, the preparation for the next decision — arrives at the next tee available.
A between-shot routine is not a luxury for elite golfers. It is the basic mental hygiene of competing across a four-hour round. What you choose to think about between shots is a skill. It requires the same intentional practice that the pre-shot routine gets. The player who has developed it has a significant advantage over the one who lets the mental round run on autopilot.
Between shots is where the round is managed. The walk is not dead time — it is the mental performance window that determines who arrives at the next shot available.
What is your intentional between-shot routine? What do you do in the walk from the result of one shot to the preparation for the next? Is it deliberate or is it running on autopilot?
The gap between the deliberate and the autopilot answer is the growth edge.
Anchor the mind between shots. Perfect peace for the steadfast mind.
Consider following this devotional with a specific between-shot routine the team develops together. The practical application makes the teaching actionable.